SPACE — New research shows that next-level quantum batteries can gain charge by breaking conventional laws of causality. Yes, conventional batteries charge by converting electrical energy into chemical energy on a very large electron scale.
But in a new proof-of-principle test, researchers discovered how a strange quantum effect can cause batteries to charge faster and more efficiently by randomizing cause and effect. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on December 14 2023.
Causality, or the relationship between cause and effect, is not always clear in quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, quantum mechanics is a strange circuit that governs this world.
“Usually, if event A occurs first and causes event B, it is assumed that B cannot cause A at the same time,” the study’s co-first author Yuanbo Chen told Live Science.
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However, the physicist at the University of Tokyo explained, recent advances in theoretical physics suggest that within a certain framework, a scenario where ‘A causes B’ and ‘B causes A’ can simultaneously occur.
The principle of quantum superposition allows particles to be in many different states simultaneously. At least, until the particle chooses a state where it lands.
Any element of a quantum object, such as momentum and location, can exist in superposition. Meanwhile, superposition is a random possibility of every possible state, and will only collapse into a certain state when the result of the object is seen.
That realization has led physicists to conduct all kinds of strange experiments that contradict our intuitive ideas about what is possible. It includes experiments on how a particle can exist and not exist in many different places at the same time.
But superposition not only confuses our intuitive sense of space, it also confuses our sense of causality. In 2009, physicists used a device called a quantum switch to observe a phenomenon called infinite causal order.
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By sending light particles, or photons down a pair of different paths, the physicists caused them to split into two possible versions: one via the first path, and the other via the second path. Then, depending on the path the photon takes, physicists apply two different processes in different orders depending on the path.
The result is a photon whose random causality is in a quantum superposition where both sequences of events are equally true. “Let’s say we have two processes: A and B. With a quantum switch, you can create a superposition: first apply A then B and first apply B then A,” Chen said.
Chen and his team wondered if they could incorporate these principles into quantum batteries? A quantum battery is a hypothetical device that could theoretically store photon energy and charge faster than any conventional electrochemical battery.
2023-12-21 13:08:00
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